> I looked for 
> a solution to this, but so far can't find any -- and this would also 
> mean that .pyd files in site-packages and elsewhere would need .manifest 
> files that contain the path to where msvcr90.dll is located.

I don't think this could even work: apparently, Vista disallows putting
a path into the name field. So extension modules will have to ship with
their own copy of the CRT (or link statically).